A Quixotic Quest to Mine Asteroids

[rudder]

Asteroid Mining will happen, but this is a risky investment. Gotta start somewhere though.

then your $499 apple ipad will cost $85,000.

Eventually we will be there... but seems ridiculously expensive.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Sailing sailing over the solar system black in my solar sail asteroid tug canoe.

Yep. This isn't rocket science

Other ways too. This is near technology stuff.

 

[cybrsage]

then your $499 apple ipad will cost $85,000.

Eventually we will be there... but seems ridiculously expensive.

Do not jest...if Apple reads this post they might put one out at that price...and the Apple faithful will still line up for days waiting to buy it.

 

[Moonbeam]

Yep. This isn't rocket science

Other ways too. This is near technology stuff.

Would imagine you could also create an asteroid ass and blow asteroid ions out of it. Rail guns would be nice too if one were careful about one's aim. Thinking about landing them on the moon makes me wonder if the moon isn't really much different than an asteroid. Seems like an easier place to mine. How deep could you sink a shaft on a cold hearted world?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Would imagine you could also create an asteroid ass and blow asteroid ions out of it. Rail guns would be nice too if one were careful about one's aim. Thinking about landing them on the moon makes me wonder if the moon isn't really much different than an asteroid. Seems like an easier place to mine. How deep could you sink a shaft on a cold hearted world?

Solar powered rail guns are an option. The needed technological improvement would be inexpensive superconductors, but if shielded from the sun needn't be of a high temp nature. Thats a key point. To be able to make mining work a while host of beneficial improvements has to happen first. Material acquisition is secondary.

 

[DigDog]

look i'll make it simple for everyone; if it seems feasible, ask yourself: "why have we not done this?"

all these technologies have been speculated upon and there are factors which make them all unfeasible. a simple example, "nudging" and asteroid. imagine designing and building a new shuttle capable of bringing up in space not only itself but a set of thruster rockets, the anchoring system, fuel, then the lot being flown to an asteroid, anchored, and then nudged .. in human terms, this is "impossible".

and for some reason it continues to escape to everyone the notion that asteroids are far - simply put, there isn't shit around earth (see the chart on the earlier post). if you want the goodies you have to go near the region of the gas giants and that's a trip taking upwards of 10 years each way. go find a crew who is trained enough AND willing to spend 25 years in space;

fyi railguns have the same problem of shredding the stratosphere when they are used (exactly like shuttles and rockets); if extraterrestrial mining were in place the ecological disaster would be immense.

also - as i have said before - stuff would simply disintegrate if shot down to earth. even by bringing up constantly shielding capsules (which increases the cost once more) you'd have problems sending to earth anything with a specific mass well above the shuttle (which is essentially a plane).

see the problem is that this *seems* feasible - unfortunately it's not. this is why it's apparent to me that those who are promoting it are in fact after something else... maybe fame(LOL @ BBC news calling james cameron an "explorer"), maybe just getting their fancy trips to space paid by some moronic investors.
world's full of idiots, as soon as you say "ground level" there's gonna be people trying to get in.

 

[Moonbeam]

look i'll make it simple for everyone; if it seems feasible, ask yourself: "why have we not done this?"

all these technologies have been speculated upon and there are factors which make them all unfeasible. a simple example, "nudging" and asteroid. imagine designing and building a new shuttle capable of bringing up in space not only itself but a set of thruster rockets, the anchoring system, fuel, then the lot being flown to an asteroid, anchored, and then nudged .. in human terms, this is "impossible".

and for some reason it continues to escape to everyone the notion that asteroids are far - simply put, there isn't shit around earth (see the chart on the earlier post). if you want the goodies you have to go near the region of the gas giants and that's a trip taking upwards of 10 years each way. go find a crew who is trained enough AND willing to spend 25 years in space;

fyi railguns have the same problem of shredding the stratosphere when they are used (exactly like shuttles and rockets); if extraterrestrial mining were in place the ecological disaster would be immense.

also - as i have said before - stuff would simply disintegrate if shot down to earth. even by bringing up constantly shielding capsules (which increases the cost once more) you'd have problems sending to earth anything with a specific mass well above the shuttle (which is essentially a plane).

see the problem is that this *seems* feasible - unfortunately it's not. this is why it's apparent to me that those who are promoting it are in fact after something else... maybe fame(LOL @ BBC news calling james cameron an "explorer"), maybe just getting their fancy trips to space paid by some moronic investors.
world's full of idiots, as soon as you say "ground level" there's gonna be people trying to get in.

Boy am I glad you straigntened that all out. No more ground floor for me.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

look i'll make it simple for everyone; if it seems feasible, ask yourself: "why have we not done this?"

We haven't done it before because the commercial space industry didn't have anywhere near the capabilities. That is quickly changing.

all these technologies have been speculated upon and there are factors which make them all unfeasible. a simple example, "nudging" and asteroid. imagine designing and building a new shuttle capable of bringing up in space not only itself but a set of thruster rockets, the anchoring system, fuel, then the lot being flown to an asteroid, anchored, and then nudged .. in human terms, this is "impossible".

No reason this couldn't be done without using a manned mission. We've have already landed craft on asteroids. We launch 3 or 4 craft that are essentially ion thruster engines that anchor themselves on strategic locations of an asteroid and gradually maneuver it into the desired orbit. Maybe have it make a slow impact into the moon or bring it into moon orbit? From there we could access it relatively easily.

and for some reason it continues to escape to everyone the notion that asteroids are far - simply put, there isn't shit around earth (see the chart on the earlier post). if you want the goodies you have to go near the region of the gas giants and that's a trip taking upwards of 10 years each way. go find a crew who is trained enough AND willing to spend 25 years in space;

That's not exactly true. There are plenty of NEOs and Earth-crossing asteroids that are potential targets for mining.

fyi railguns have the same problem of shredding the stratosphere when they are used (exactly like shuttles and rockets); if extraterrestrial mining were in place the ecological disaster would be immense.

also - as i have said before - stuff would simply disintegrate if shot down to earth. even by bringing up constantly shielding capsules (which increases the cost once more) you'd have problems sending to earth anything with a specific mass well above the shuttle (which is essentially a plane).

see the problem is that this *seems* feasible - unfortunately it's not. this is why it's apparent to me that those who are promoting it are in fact after something else... maybe fame(LOL @ BBC news calling james cameron an "explorer"), maybe just getting their fancy trips to space paid by some moronic investors.
world's full of idiots, as soon as you say "ground level" there's gonna be people trying to get in.

In the late 1800s many claimed that people being able to fly was a pipedream that would never be achieved. In the early 1900s that changed and we quickly moved on. In short time we had commercial aviation. The same attitude was taken when people began talking about going to the moon. A lot of people thought there was no way it was possible.

I'm not saying that mining asteroids will definitely be in our future. But considering the past it's hard to discount the ingenuity of man. Never say never.

 

[frostedflakes]

For the naysayers, this Caltech study is an interesting read, it investigates the feasibility of bringing an asteroid into lunar orbit.

http://kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_report.pdf

The study concludes that a 7m, 500-ton asteroid could be captured and tugged into lunar orbit by 2025 at a cost of $2.6 billion. Costly and challenging, no doubt, but this isn't science fiction either. If NASA could somehow convince Congress to appropriate them the money for the project or if there was enough profit to be made from this for the private sector to run with it, this could be done with technology we have today.

7m is tiny, though, have we even discovered NEOs anywhere close to that small? I think NASA and some other agencies have been cataloging large (>1km) NEOs because of their potential for causing devastating amounts of damage if one was ever to collide with Earth, but I thought with current telescopes it was pretty difficult to find <1km NEOs. Seems like actually finding profitable candidates for mining that can be pulled into lunar or Earth orbit at a reasonable cost with current or near-future technology might be the more difficult part of this venture. Sounds like Planetary Resources's first goal is to reduce the cost of orbiting telescopes, I guess the idea is that if you can get more eyes in the sky looking for NEOs it will increase the likelihood of finding good candidates for mining.

Although the long-term goal of the company is to mine asteroids, its initial plans call for developing a market for small (30&#8211;50 kg) cost-reduced space telescopes for both Earth observation and astronomy. These spacecraft would employ a laser-optical system for ground communications, reducing payload bulk and mass compared to conventional RF antennae. The deployment of such orbital telescopes is envisioned as the first step forward in the company's asteroid mining ambitions. The same telescope satellite capabilities that Planetary Resources hopes to sell to customers can be used to survey and intensively examine near-Earth asteroids.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

7m is tiny, though, have we even discovered NEOs anywhere close to that small?

We see them fairly regularly.

http://www.space.com/15043-small-asteroids-earth-close-shave.html

Once detected their orbit can be calculated and they are catalogued so we can watch for them in the future.

 

[Steeplerot]

If we do not get there first comrades!

Then we shall nuke capitalism from orbit once ze big red battlecruiser is complete.

(more retro space propaganda from the cold war here if you dig that stuff) http://www.retronaut.co/2012/02/soviet-space-propaganda-posters-1958-1963/

 

[werepossum]

We haven't done it before because the commercial space industry didn't have anywhere near the capabilities. That is quickly changing.


No reason this couldn't be done without using a manned mission. We've have already landed craft on asteroids. We launch 3 or 4 craft that are essentially ion thruster engines that anchor themselves on strategic locations of an asteroid and gradually maneuver it into the desired orbit. Maybe have it make a slow impact into the moon or bring it into moon orbit? From there we could access it relatively easily.


That's not exactly true. There are plenty of NEOs and Earth-crossing asteroids that are potential targets for mining.


In the late 1800s many claimed that people being able to fly was a pipedream that would never be achieved. In the early 1900s that changed and we quickly moved on. In short time we had commercial aviation. The same attitude was taken when people began talking about going to the moon. A lot of people thought there was no way it was possible.

I'm not saying that mining asteroids will definitely be in our future. But considering the past it's hard to discount the ingenuity of man. Never say never.

All inventions go through a predictable cycle for most of us.
1. It can't be done.
2. It can be done, but it will never be practical.
3. It will one day be practical, but isn't now.
4. I always thought it was a good idea.

 

[DigDog]

yeah but .. no.

i dont want to repost the same stuff over again. it's not worth it. read the other posts, do the math, who cares. the only mining in space we are going to do is to get stuff that is seriously rare, and gold ain't. if you believe otherwise, you're in with the lot who is waving bundles of cash at cameron & co yelling "take my money". chao.

 

[Moonbeam]

yeah but .. no.

i dont want to repost the same stuff over again. it's not worth it. read the other posts, do the math, who cares. the only mining in space we are going to do is to get stuff that is seriously rare, and gold ain't. if you believe otherwise, you're in with the lot who is waving bundles of cash at cameron & co yelling "take my money". chao.

Golly, some folk get upset if you don't believe what they say. I wonder why.

 

[cybrsage]

I often wonder why people who are not financially involved at all get upset when they find out about people who decide they want to invent something new.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

yeah but .. no.

i dont want to repost the same stuff over again. it's not worth it. read the other posts, do the math, who cares. the only mining in space we are going to do is to get stuff that is seriously rare, and gold ain't. if you believe otherwise, you're in with the lot who is waving bundles of cash at cameron & co yelling "take my money". chao.

No need to repost the same stuff since your post has already been shown to contain flawed arguments.

Here's the main thing. I concede that it may not happen, though there does exist possibilities, while you claim it that is absolutely impossibile. People who have claimed that such grandiose things are impossible have been proven wrong time and time again throughout man's history.

Your claim is not compelling, or scientifically thought out, nor does it show that it is impossible at all. Besides that, who has claimed we would be mining asteroids mostly for gold? There are many elements rarer than gold and those are the targets, though I doubt that if asteroids were mined that gold would simply be discarded. If it can be mined and returned to Earth for a profit then gold would be mined as well.

 

[Moonbeam]

No need to repost the same stuff since your post has already been shown to contain flawed arguments.

Here's the main thing. I concede that it may not happen, though there does exist possibilities, while you claim it that is absolutely impossibile. People who have claimed that such grandiose things are impossible have been proven wrong time and time again throughout man's history.

Your claim is not compelling, or scientifically thought out, nor does it show that it is impossible at all. Besides that, who has claimed we would be mining asteroids mostly for gold? There are many elements rarer than gold and those are the targets, though I doubt that if asteroids were mined that gold would simply be discarded. If it can be mined and returned to Earth for a profit then gold would be mined as well.

He's got it in his head that it's a con and you know what it's like to deal with conspiracy theorists.

 

[ichy]

All inventions go through a predictable cycle for most of us.
1. It can't be done.
2. It can be done, but it will never be practical.
3. It will one day be practical, but isn't now.
4. I always thought it was a good idea.

Do you have an actual argument or just vague, feel-good statements. The fact that some inventions were poo-pooed before they took off hardly proves that something wacky like mining asteroids is feasible. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, "they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Newton, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

 

[cybrsage]

Wow, Sagan really dissed Newton for being wrong about how gravity works. I did not realize Sagan was such a jerk.




















EDIT: This post is not to be taken seriously..well, except for the Newton got gravity wrong part, that part is true.

 

[werepossum]

Do you have an actual argument or just vague, feel-good statements. The fact that some inventions were poo-pooed before they took off hardly proves that something wacky like mining asteroids is feasible. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, "they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Newton, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

LOL Case in point.

Mining asteroids is perfectly feasible with the knowledge we now have, so we're somewhere between #2 & #3. Assuming we never master gravity and reasonably cheap fusion energy, we'll be at #2 and the world will become an increasingly miserable place as we exhaust our energy and resources. Otherwise we're at #3; we understand the most basic technology involved, just not when it will become feasible, and we know we will eventually be mining asteroids. Hardly a wacky idea. Although considering that NASA's best minds crashed their first Mars probe into the planet, I'll admit I'm not eager to see it undertaken next month.

 

[ichy]

Mining asteroids is feasible with current technology, doing it *profitably* is still in the realm of science fiction.

 

[DrPizza]

look i'll make it simple for everyone; if it seems feasible, ask yourself: "why have we not done this?"

all these technologies have been speculated upon and there are factors which make them all unfeasible. a simple example, "nudging" and asteroid. imagine designing and building a new shuttle capable of bringing up in space not only itself but a set of thruster rockets, the anchoring system, fuel, then the lot being flown to an asteroid, anchored, and then nudged .. in human terms, this is "impossible".

Impossible? Maybe you should call up NASA, since they've ALREADY done something similar. That you think such a craft would be launched from a space shuttle like vehicle demonstrates how little you actually know, unless you're just trolling.

"Why haven't we already done this?" - actually, we have already demonstrated many of the components of such a mission. The only thing that hasn't been done is bothering with the math to make multiple nudges that are "just right."

 

[Moonbeam]

EDIT: This post is not to be taken seriously..

Folk taking your posts seriously is not something I think you should spend much time worrying about.

 

[cybrsage]

Folk taking your posts seriously is not something I think you should spend much time worrying about.

There you go, projecting your own insecurities onto others. You have made this a habit, and it is quite unbecoming.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Do you have an actual argument or just vague, feel-good statements. The fact that some inventions were poo-pooed before they took off hardly proves that something wacky like mining asteroids is feasible. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, "they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Newton, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

Carl Sagan also said "The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”

Better arguments have been made than yours in this thread.